


Wild Heart

by GoddessOfGanon



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, If Ganondorf were in BOTW, Mainly from Zelda's perspective, Reconciliation, Worldbuilding, aftermath and recovery, breath of the wild AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 19:28:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16687567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessOfGanon/pseuds/GoddessOfGanon
Summary: In where Zelda finds she is not the only one imprisoned by the Calamity, and that Link is not the only one able to combat it.This work is my first response to playing through Breath of the Wild and realizing Ganondorf is not in it. AU in many respects but will still follow the canon timeline.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This draft has been sitting on my computer for over a year, so I'm excited to finally be sharing it with you all! Link will still be a major character in this story, so don't think he's just being replaced by Ganondorf. ;) 
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are deeply appreciated. Enjoy! Xx

The winds howl without mercy at the top of Hyrule Castle, a crescendo welling against the shattered glass and tumbled stone that carry to the peaks of its towers, where, upon a threadbare rug that once honored the tread of kings, Princess Zelda sits alone.

Here she would sit to be crowned queen,  _ if  _ Hyrule hadn’t yielded to the Calamity,  _ if   _ she were fit to be a queen in the first place. Yet, as her kingdom has failed her, she has failed it, too, and thus she sits alone.

Hyrule rests now in a stage of decay unique to itself, any similar account lost to Zelda in her searches of the royal library, where once proud stacks of tomes now lay in the waste of shredded vellum. Yet, beyond the ruins visible from the scope of field she can see from the windows of her bedroom, Hyrule continues. She knows this, that all is not lost and gone. She at times spies travelers and their caravans in the distance, as well as the monsters of all sorts that rush to take them down. She sees a Hyrule beyond that is chipping, like the flake off a dull coin that wishes terribly to be gold. That is Zelda’s Hyrule, in its current state. Her father’s Hyrule was the sharp glint from a gilded promise, one that left you blind, if only for a moment.

She has not seen her father for some time now. Though he perished when the Calamity overtook the castle, he had managed to appear to her in spectral form some months after his passing. It has served as the sole conciliation to Zelda during her encampment in the castle, a balm to her isolation. Her chest begins to pound, the rusted machinations of her century-old heart, when she thinks of where her father may be now.

The Hero has awoken from his century of slumber, imbued onto a voyage he did not ask for amidst the ruin of a kingdom he no longer knows. She was able to speak to him through her mind, though was limited at her vantage in the castle. It is her last hope that her father had found him, and can fill in the finer points of the monumental task before him, the splintering details that she herself could not bring herself to say, the accumulation of all of her failures that have brought her kingdom to its current state.

_ Link . . . you are the light -our light- that must shine upon Hyrule once again. _

Her heart feels heavy, though she tells herself to revel in this. It is the most she has felt in ages. It means something is changing, and she can only pray to the goddesses who have ceased listening to her that this change will be for the good.

Princess Zelda trails down the hall, sliding her palm along the stone walls and concentrating on the sensation of the uneven grains catching on her skin. She’s nearly reached the end of the corridor, is about to turn to complete the traverse loop for as long as it takes the sun to set, when her ears pick up on a sound she has not heard for over one hundred years.

Footsteps.

She freezes where she stands, her palm pressed to the wall and her head tilted towards to noise. It cannot be the Hero, he’s only just been dispatched. He is unequipped and ill-informed, and the field between the castle and the Shrine of Resurrection is crawling with Guardians. Though he ability is incomparable, even he could not have made it to her this fast. Could he? Well, then where is the roar of the Calamity? 

The presence also feels darker, somehow, than she would expect from the prodigal savior of Hyrule. The hairs on her arms rise, alerting her to a shift in the air, the entrance of a predator. She turns on a heel, doubling back on her steps. She trips over her own feet, her shoulder tearing into the stone walls, a body jolted from its default of lethargy into something charged and much alive. Her heartbeat sits in her ears, a deafening pang as she falls into the throne room, crawling on her hands and knees to the throne at the end of the room, which stretches much farther now than any time she can recall.

As a young girl, the Queen of Hyrule had told her that the throne was protected by the goddesses. If there were ever an intrusion to the castle that could not be stayed by the royal guard, she must race to the throne room. Though Zelda had come to doubt divine protection more and more as she grew, it is all she has to rely on now. She drags herself up the steps leading to the throne, as though to grovel at the feet of higher power.

Once collapsing upon it, she turns to face the doors, expects them to fly from their hinges, for the blight to pour in, for her impossibly long life to be cut improbably short. Her heart beats in her throat for several long moments, where she repeatedly has to blink tears from her eyes, so as to see her combatant clearly. She has not means to fight it, she knows this, aside from her dignity. 

When the doors to the throne room do open, there is no rumble, no blast or scream. They whine on their hinges, opening just a sliver, though afterwards remain quite still. Zelda pitches forward in her seat, her mind racing to discern what she sees before her, a figure that is edging its way into the room as if not to be seen.

A man. He could be double her size, cutting an impressive figure even at a distance. Clad in dim armor that reflects little of the light pouring into the room, a threadbare cape adorned with the faded ruins of some place distant that grazes the floor, brushing the tops of  worn leather boots. A mismatched sword and shield rest over the broad expanse of his back, draped with a cord of a russet braid that’s thrown over his shoulder. The details of his face are a challenge to make out, though he seems to be smiling.

Zelda’s fisted grip falters on the armrests of the throne. If it were the Calamity, her death would have been, at the very least, guaranteed and likely swift. She has no idea the designs of this man, nor how she will be involved. Which she must be. Realization sets in. A stranger has found his way into her castle. 

No- she cannot say this man is unfamiliar to her.

She has never seen his face, but she knows his name.

_ “Ganondorf.” _


	2. Chapter I - Calamity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zelda and Ganondorf's first conversation is flooded with questions and the beginnings of answers. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit dialogue-heavy, but there is much to discuss!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your interest and feedback! :) I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts with each update. Xx

_“Why are you here?”_

“You have the presumption to ask _me_ that?” Zelda rises from the throne,  nearly losing her balance as she starts upright. The rush of breath from her lungs makes her chest seize, it stirs the dust of her silence. Though her throat burns, she keeps her eyes locked on the man in front of her, so far from her. It’s a mockery of this space; once lined with nobles and knights and gold, a now, the two of them, useless to take up more space, contribute to the majesty that once reflected off these stone walls.

Ganondorf takes a step forward, though stills when a spark of light crackles off of Zelda’s hand, the Triforce emblem on the back of her right palm blazing amid the sunset hue leaking in from the high, arched windows set into the stone wall. “I did not come here to harm you. I assumed this place was long deserted, Calamity and all.”

His voice sounds as out of use as hers, raw, though not weak. There’s a barb of something accusatory to it, to have found the princess in her castle, upon her throne no less, as though she never belonged there at all. For a moment, impossibly, he reminds Zelda of her father.

She is soon to shake the thought, however, and wills herself to focus. Though she cannot say she is exactly rushed with adrenaline, the situation nonetheless requires her to be alert, lest he change his mind about causing harm. _“Well, I_ am here because of the beast _you_ created. Do not force me to answer questions you already know the answer to and tell me why _you_ are here, and why you’ve taken this form.”

“I have taken nothing.” Ganondorf returns through gritted teeth. “You’ll be quite pleased to know I am not an apparition of the Calamity. I’ve chosen no form to show you today than my own flesh.”

There are some moments when Zelda becomes acutely aware of the presence of the Calamity surrounding her, in a moment, placed in a box with the swirl of blight on all sides, a box that keeps getting smaller.  She waits for the image of a man in front of her to dissolve into that smoke and sludge. She didn’t know Calamity Ganon had a human guise; why would it take one, after securing the castle for itself? She knows him now, Ganondorf, from the memories of previous lifetimes imbued by the goddesses. That, and as bearers of the Triforce, she isn’t unaware of the energy one piece exudes when in the presence of another.

She cannot help but feel that the timing is impeccable. The Hero has just awoken, her first hope in years, and with it, just enough darkness to extinguish that flame.

“I don’t understand.” Zelda ventures, tightening her hands around the curled armrests of the throne.

He grins, then, all teeth. “Then allow me to enlighten you.

“The day you sealed Link into the Shrine of Resurrection, you managed to fend off  a part of the Calamity, the part it was willing to leave behind. If you will excuse the phrase, you severed its weakest link.”

“Which was?” Zelda manages to swallow the unease the sticks to her throat at the comparison.  To be likened to the Calamity, a fear she was unaware she had, actualized.

 _“Me.”_ Ganondorf bites out. “We were one, in the beginning. I had Power, and I wanted more of it. So did the Calamity. There came a point when I became a host, and then there came a point when I was no longer enough.” Zelda watches his jaw clench, the thick cords of vein in his neck rising to the surface of his skin with tension. She can feel the waves of anger roll off of him, even at a distance. “It . . . _rejected_ me, and just about killed me in the process. All the dust of the ruins had settled by the time I had gained enough strength back to realize it hadn’t.”

“So the day Link woke up, you did, too?” Zelda bites her bottom lip to hide its trembling. Her mind races to sort the information into categories she can understand, though a comparison between the two of them seems beyond what she is willing to consider.

Ganondorf turns away, smirking to himself. His ability to find mirth in the situation sets Zelda’s on edge, further to the drop than before.  “Not quite. My story is closer to yours than the Hero’s.”

“How so?” Zelda returns,

He meets her gaze, molten amber against aquamarine. “I have spent every day clawing my way back into existence for the past one hundred years.” She flinches at the roll of thunder in his voice. The humor on his face is gone, his features are drawn and though he hasn’t moved from the doorway, she sees the lines on his face, the telling of age. They dissapear in the next moment, and truthfully he looks not much older than herself.

“And you haven’t died?” Though it isn’t a question, and she’s turned to shaking. She clasps her hands behind her back to hide it.

“I imagine I will die when the Hero fells the Calamity, though that would presume there’s something still connecting us yet. Perhaps I will feel nothing when it dies, and wither away into my own nothingness just like everybody else.” His tone does not change from its air of indifference. Unbidden, she thinks of Link, lying the muddy field as the life in him died. She thinks about speaking of that moment as carelessly as he. Her stomach lurches, and she opts to change the subject, sort out one problem at a time, though she feels they’ll soon be too many in number to do so.

“How did you get here? To the castle?” She adds, in answer to his questioning stare.

“I walked.” He returns dryly. Long ago, Zelda had been told that one glare from her was all it took to make a man wither where he stood, though it appears now that skill has been lost. “The guardians didn’t seem to notice me. Or if they did, they felt no need to attack.”

“And now you’re here.” Zelda whispers.

“And now I’m here.” Ganondorf echoes.

“So you could leave, if you desired.” Her voice raises like a question, something hopeful.

“You want me to leave?” He replies, looking rather like an affirmative answer wouldn’t turn him to the exit regardless. He takes a few steps closer to the throne, an accent to this fact.

Zelda ducks her head, balling her fists in the fabric of her dress. “Whenever I try to leave, the blight covers my path. It holds me here. I fear the maws would come after me, if I did manage to escape it.” That the blight would allow Ganondorf to pass, but recognize Zelda as one who should not, She shudders to think of the _intelligence_ of the morphous goo. Distractedly, she’s fascinated. She must see how it reacts around him, and if he really can come and go so easily.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Ganondorf prompts, once she’s spent long enough lost in her own head.

“Why would I want you to stay?” She raises her head and returns his question with her own. “You are an invader to my castle, while I’m . . .” She stalls for a moment, drawing her lower lip between her teeth as she mulls over any sense of leverage she may be able to draw above herself.

“The heir to a throne of nothing?” Ganondorf  supplies, pitching his brow.

Her mind halts. Her hands tense in the not-quite formation of fists. _Nothing but failure,_ her father’s voice echos off the walls of her skull. _Nothing, nothing._ “How did you . . . ?”

“I walked the lands a bit, before I came here. Before the Hyrulians emerged from the rubble. I’d come across these places where the air changed. I remembered events I had no part in.”

“You . . . saw my memories?” Her voice is small, for a moment, as words struggle to rise against the raw feeling in her throat. At the first minute show of a nod, a consideration, _yes,_ that must be what I saw, it becomes large again.

“Those were for Link!” Zelda screams, and before she can think to rise, she is running. She could not say how long it took her to reach the doorway, she is there after she blinks, lettings her fists sail where they reach, the impact from hitting Ganondorf’s chestplate sending a pulse of pain down her arm, the most she has felt in a century. It’s enough to make her still, her hands against his chest. Her rage continues to course through her, though it’s gone cold now. She find she cannot ignore how warm his chestplate feels against the side of her fists. She cannot move, for this is the first touch she’s with another since she held Link in her arms as he lay dying.

She can feel her own breath shaking her chest, a pulse in each of her muscles.

“Stay.” The words drop from her lips. He must hear them before she does, for he’s taken several steps back and though she lurches at the loss of contact, she hears herself, as if the echo reflected off his armor. _Stay,_ she’s told him. His eyes flash, gold, like dessert sand and sunlight.

“What are you trying to-”

“You have no right to my memories.” Zelda interrupts. Her nails dig into the beds of her palms, hardening her fists against his chestplate. “But, granting what I cannot change, I need you to tell me what you saw, what you know. You’ve seen Hyrule as it was, and as it is. I must know how the people are faring. Once Link defeats the Calamity, I will need to be prepared to rebuild Hyrule, so I must know the needs that I will have to meet. And do not lie. I will know if you lie.”

“How so?”

“Call it Wisdom.” She snaps, far from a place that would indulge in his teasing.

Ganondorf sneers, taking a step back. Her hands drop in between them, now resting limp at her sides. “Have you any other reason that I should stay, other than to help you?”

Zelda steps forward. “I will kill you if you try to go.”

He swallows, just as if a blade has been pressed to his throat. The Triforce on Zelda’s right hand is glaringly bright. Though she does not seem to notice it, a yellow-white light furls from her hand, dipping into the crevices of the stone beneath their feet and stirring the ends of her golden hair. Now, for the first time, he thinks, she resembles Hylia properly.

“In that case,” Ganondorf murmurs. If nothing else, he is a man who knows a war when he sees one. “What would you like to know?”

Zelda nearly falters, though she manages to suppress her surprise that he folded so quickly from showing. “I was told Link may not retain any of his memories when he wakes in the shrine of resurrection. In the little time I had, I left what I thought were formative moments that may help him remember who he was- who he is. Tell me, was I successful in this?”

“To think, if I were Link?” Ganondorf snorts, folding his arms over his chest. “Can’t say that’s a thought I’ve entertained before.” Zelda does not respond, narrowing her eyes in a way to say she doesn’t much care for how long it takes for him to come up with an answer, so long as she receives one.

He takes a moment to think. Guardians, in their prime. The castle, as it was. Zelda crying in the rain.

_And do not lie. I will know if you lie._

“I would think you were in love with me.”

Zelda shuts her eyes, just short of a flinch. “What else?”

“That Hyrule is a land worth saving.”

Zelda’s eyes snap open, only to narrow in suspicion. She cannot help but feel she’s detected the spark of sarcasm in his voice. “Why does it sound like you’re telling me what you think I want to hear?”

“Was it not?” Ganondorf jeers, before turning away with a gruff sigh and folding his arms over his chest. “In those memories, I saw what you couldn’t. I saw the look in your eyes. Your sacrifices would not have ceased there. But to defeat the Calamity, your piece of the Triforce will be necessary. You throw that away, and we’ll have nothing to overpower it.”

Zelda stiffens, although whether the cause is his accurate read of her or the use of _we,_ is uncertain. “Well, martyrdom suits me.” She sniffs, taking the final steps down the dais, allowing them to square off properly. “The previous Zelda’s would only agree, of that I am sure.”

“You’re too forward.” She warns. It’s a phrase she utilised often, back when she had a court, and expectations, and suitors who would attempt to croon her at balls with their dry jokes and blushed charm. Time become blurry, on the subject of time. When she comes back into herself, in her dilapidated throne room, speaking with the man who her memory of previous lifetimes has only warned her against, she cannot make an excuse for why she continues to stand there, to listen to him speak.

“I remember those Zelda’s, unlike you.” He reminds her, though it sounds more like a taunt. And how could it not be? Zelda bristles at the claim, though she cannot deny it. The return of her reincarnations has been lost to her, she can only assume due to the weakness of her communion with the goddesses. She’s caught glimpses, enough to comprehend the narrative. She reigns, she fails, Link saves her. Ganondorf dies. They all do, sometimes. “And I can think of a few who would strike you for making such a claim.” He continues. “They weren’t all born to die.”

“But I am?”

“No.” Ganondorf’s face twists, a flash of annoyance. She could say it’s droll, that he continues to seem unimpressed by her lack of stalwart confrontation to the facts of her heritage that she’s yet to prove herself.

Instead, Zelda scoffs, blinking away the few frustrated tears that wet her lashes. “Why should I be comforted by that, by you?” It’s a cruel word, coming from her own lips. She has not known comfort for some time.

“Because I knew you in another life.” He shoots back, and Zelda steps back. _You’re too forward._ She thinks, though no longer with the diffident repuidance.

“Don’t say that." She snaps. "If you know me as I know you, then you should be able only to say how I was in the moments before you struck me down. You presume a personality to our exchange, as if that’s possible. Do you forget we’re born enemies?”

Beyond them, the sun has begun to set. The saturated hues of impending twilight flood the throne room, casting deep shadows onto the splintered stone floor.  

“We were not always enemies.” He says quietly. The sunlight glints off his teeth when he sneers, like the single blink of light when an animal opens their jaws to consume their cornered prey. “Were you so wise as to have forgotten that? What _do_ you remember, Princess?”

“They came to me in dreams.” Zelda admits, turning her head and opting to watch their shadows play out their conversation rather than returning Ganondorf’s fierce gaze. “They always begin light, then turn dark. Then I can only see in flashes, fights with swords, mostly. A blur of green, Link, I think. I’m usually away somewhere. Trapped. Listening to steel against steel, the roar of magic. Your laugh is almost always the same. Like brushfire, dry, and boundless. I could hear it from wherever I was standing.” She turns to him, then, breaking from her revine. “Is that sufficient for you?”

“You remember seconds of centuries, then.” Ganondorf murmurs. For a second he looks as though he pities her, and she is prepared to strike him, though he soon enough resumes a neutral face. “There were many times, Princess, when I fell to your sword, not you to mine.” He draws out his words, as if to ensure that she will listen.

“Would you be laughing, when you were killed?”

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “If I found myself bested in a fair fight, perhaps I would.”

“There were also,” He continues, “Times when it was not the matter who was more powerful or more wise.”

“So we were equals, then?” Zelda asks, not attempting to mask her misgivings towards the proposition. That they have been anything aside from enemies has yet to cross her mind.

 _“Equal,_ yes. Just as humans are equal insofar as they are able to kill each other.”

Zelda turns her head, eyeing him with a measured gaze. “That’s Haytham, isn’t it?” She recalls the image of an old text from the royal library, bound in red vellum. A large portion of her tutelage as a child had been learning from Hyrule’s great philosophers. Haytham’s texts were one of her father’s favorites, though never hers. “He believed that the nature of humans defaulted to cruelty. I . . . struggle to believe that. But his theories fell apart when you don’t assume the worst, don’t they?”

Ganondorf nods. “We used to study him in the barracks. It seemed to justify the killings, being us or the other guy. Though if you do decide to kill me, just know that we are not equals.” Zelda raises a brow in question, he groans when he catches it. “Don’t look daft, now. You think the Calamity would have left me without taking Power with it? Though I suppose some shred of it must have remained, for me to have survived this long. I do have to wonder why I’m not a pile of dust at the moment.”

“That is why you’re here, isn’t it? To get it back?” Zelda whispers, her tone slipping into dejectedness. She is not sure exactly what it is she resents about his quest; that it it reserved for the Hero, that she will once again be forced to watch another man complete the tasks that she herself cannot, and retain a connection to the goddesses that has been half-lost to her. It is easier to not believe in what the man in front of her is capable of. Dangerous, too.

“That is exactly what I’m here for.” Ganondorf snarls, his face darkening as the shadows cast over him begin to dim in the setting sunlight. “And if you had any sense to save your kingdom, you wouldn’t stop me.”

Ganondorf rolls his eyes. She cannot conclude why her own self-doubt would be taxing on him, of all people, though he’s done nothing but show disdain for it. “I’m aware your communion with the goddesses is . . . lacking. However, you are still Hylia born. I don’t understand where your meekness is coming from. Aside from that, you are invincible. You should treat yourself as such.”

 _“Invincible?”_ Zelda rears back, as though he’s struck her. It’s what it feels like. That he should be annoyed with her for doubting her cause, rather that infuriated for doubting his, it’s maddening. To be forced to defend her own weakness causes a hurt and a fury she cannot describe. “I have been trapped here, with a storm inside my castle that has torn my kingdom apart! A storm that _you_ caused! You think me _invincible?_ You took that from me.”

Ganondorf meets her gaze, holds it without saying anything as though he suspects she’ll retract her words upon realizing error. She denies him this, however, and he turns to the doors, the tattered remains of his cape flaring behind him as he departs.

“Where are you going?” Zelda calls after him, not daring to take more than a few steps to follow him.

He leaves without answering, and the doors to the throne room slam with a resound that seems to shake the whole castle. In the distance, the Calamity roars, though she cannot be sure if in disdain or agreement. Perhaps it senses that its former host is angry, and cries out in sympathy.

When he’s gone, the inside of her chest stings something physical, more than she’s felt in a while.

She sinks to the floor, in the middle of the throne room. She wraps her arms around her knees and lowers her head, and thinks to let herself stay in this position for another century, though truthfully it’s only about an hour before she raises her head. Night has fallen, and she’s still alone. She does not often dream, though that is the only way she can think to explain what has just taken place. Yet, her limbs are sore and her throat still burns from talking; it serves as a reminder.

She hasn’t had anyone to talk to in a long, long time.


	3. Chapter II- Muse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zelda contemplates the side effects of her longevity, and Ganondorf enacts a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I have many (perhaps too many) WIPs at the moment, though I do have to say that this is one of my favorites. Zelgan was the first ship I wrote for, so it feels nostalgic in a way as I prepare each chapter. I hope you enjoy! Xx

Days and nights spent in Hyrule castle pass blurridely, like an indeterminate fog.  What feels like a couple of days may be a week. The rise and fall of the sun and moon are little to go by, as Zelda has tried and failed to hold on to them while time passes through her fingers like sand. She may blink and miss it.

Perhaps having Ganondorf in the castle has helped, some. Though she has yet to meet him face to face since their first encounter, she can sense his presence as its wanes in distance. They waltz circles around each other, though they’re scarcely aware of it. She is aware of every moment that passes with him in proximity when he hasn’t before. That is how she knows it has been a week since his arrival. Or, as history may stand as a premonition, his return. To this, she can only muster a numb cognizance. What is there to fear when the worst has already occured? she once thought, before finding herself afraid in several new ways. The fear of being made more afraid is what paralyzes soldiers on the battlefield. Yet, after a week of silence that passes slowly as a year, the anticipatory anxiety begins to fade. Perhaps he is just as powerful as she. Yes, this is the thought that comforts Zelda.

All the while, it’s as though the beast living in the heart of the castle is standing on tiptoe, waiting to see what will happen.

When Zelda sleeps, in the few and far between moments of dawn and twilight, she begins to remember. The flashes follow in similar manner as always, fleeting and dark, though they now carry images she’s never seen before. The shift is subtle and slow, the shift that upturns everything she’s ever thought. For now, more than ever, now, she understands that not all versions of herself are the same. It makes her feel quite alone, quite different. 

There is no one with whom she may relinquish her fears or share her worries, for the only one at all who may understand is far, far away. She had asked him to survey the lands of Hyrule, fallen as they were. She wonders if he heeded her request or is, instead, like she, wandering.

**\---**

The view from the windows is vast and clear, though she knows what lurks beyond her view. Like ivy creeping up a tower, the blight waits on the other side of the wall, waiting to spill into the halls if she gets too close to the window’s edge. She could forget it’s there, should she attempt it. Out of sight, out of mind. And yet, negligence was never a part of her duty. She failed, once, and her kingdom payed the price. She will not ensure such debt again.

“Zelda.”

She whirls around, a barb on her tongue that’s prepared to admonish Ganondorf for sneaking up on her, when she comes face to face with her father.

The late King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule flares into semi-transparency in a cloud of bluish air and white light. This isn’t the first time he’s appeared to her in this way, though it is the first in a while. The effort to transpose himself as such means his visits are few and far between. She suspects one day, he will grow unable to appear to her at all, though she tries to avoid dwelling on that.

His form flickers and she cannot tell quite clearly the expression on his face. Her heart beats fast in her throat. 

_ Has he seen Ganondorf? _

What would her father do, if he discovered the source and cause of the Calamity walking undisturbed in the halls of his castle? What  _ could  _ he do? In his spectral form, he could not take the matter into his own hands, so to speak, though surely he could find someone just as eager to carry out the deed. He’s already conferred with Link, summoning all his ability to appear as  human as possibly in order to set the Hero on his destined path. He may have come to warn her of the intrusion upon the castle, and she will be forced to look her father in the eyes and say,  _ I have chosen not to run from this man. _

“Zelda,” Her father says again.

He is smiling.

Her breath pitches with a sigh of relief, though her shoulders remain taut with tension. “You are aware of what has occured, yes?” Her father posits, his ghostly eyes glimmering with a look one might dare say makes him look more alive then when he had been living. While possible to present one’s relief nobly, the look on his face breeches an unprecedented display of excitement. 

Zelda returns it with a tired smile, some semblance of strength through faith returning to her. Was it Haytham, who taught her that? She cannot recall. She thinks now of her knight, whose awakening has added a new air to her lungs, the idea that she is breathing for them both and she will do so for as long as she has to while urging him forward, forward. “I spoke to him, and I believe he heard me.” If her father notices the warble of her voice, he does not note on it. “I-I saw him rise from the Shrine of Resurrection. There are moments when I can see him, in my mind’s eye, I can see what he’s doing. He’s running. He hasn’t stopped running.”

She can dare to see the shape of him now, if she allows her mind to wander just enough. Paying full attention to her father is a learned trait, though now he must pardon the lapse. “He deserves those memories.” He says with a distant sigh that does not disturb the air. “Blessings be, it won’t be long now before you are able to return them.” 

He sounds quite proud of Link, but then, he always had been. He had treated Link like a show pony at the best of times, and Zelda had only come to see the worst of times towards the end of things. For the more fond she became of her knight, the more her father seemed to resent their closeness. They could only be a distraction to one another, inseparable as they were. Yet as they are now, seperated, the matter is now inconsequential. 

“Our hope has awoken.”   
Zelda fights back a shiver, for he speaks as though it’s a warning. Link has awoken, Link is nearly here. This thing with feathers that is coming to save them all. “You must find it in yourself to do so, as well.” The King adds. His ghostly form flickers as he narrows his eyes at Zelda. She tenses under his gaze, as she always has. “You seem ill at ease, daughter. What could possibly ail you now that Hyrule has a chance to be saved?”

The corners of her lips flicker as an excuse asking pardon. “It has been long since I have had any joys to celebrate. Perhaps my smile has fallen to disuse.”

The king’s features soften, though by only a fraction. “You must practice then, my dear girl.”

His form starts to flicker then, in place of a goodbye. Their gazes meet in a stern yet passionate intertwinement before he’s gone completely. She watches the air around him evaporate, watches him fade into oblivion.

“Is he gone, then?”

Zelda knows now who is behind her without having to turn. Though she had not heard his footsteps touch the cobblestone walkway,  the air has thickened to signal Ganondorf’s approach. While the Calamity’s blight does not swallow him as he walks, it dares to follow at a distance, framing the doorway through which he has passed only when he has crossed to the furthest end of the hall, where Zelda has not moved.

“Yes,” Zelda says, releasing the breath that had seized her chest upon her father’s sudden appearance. A feeling of grief washes over her at his parting, at another fresh death. It fades, soon enough, as he did. She turns to face Ganondorf, who has a pack slung over his shoulder that he hadn’t been carrying when he arrived. He carries a bundle of wooden logs beneath one arm and a faintly smug look on his face.  

“You weren’t to leave the castle.” She says quietly, not yet admonishing what she does not understand. The blight let him pass as easily as it granted his entrance, while she could not draw close to a window without it reaching to confine her? If she once wished in vain for them to both be prisoners, she wishes no longer.

“I don’t believe I promised anything of the sort.” Ganondorf growls, pricked by the admonishment in her tone, that she would stand to be queenly amidst the ruins of her crumpled kingdom. He does not comment on, or perhaps he does not notice, the collapse of her features as her mind echoes with the word  _ prisoner. _ Perhaps he dismissed it as a look of wounded pride, if he had noticed. “And what, you expect me to starve? I searched the castle for hours last night and could not find your storerooms, and, failing that, could not find you.”

His words are bordered with an accusation that she cannot muster the will to address, though her silence does grant Ganondorf the time to consider the fact. “You told me that the blight prevents you from leaving the castle. Were you telling the truth?”

“Someone could have seen you.” 

“They’re all too scared of the Guardians to enter these woods. Besides, I know how to remain hidden.” Ganondorf replies easily, if with a bit of smart offense. “You don’t have storerooms, do you?”

After several beats of silence, Zelda shakes her head, feeling unnerved that he will not let the subject drop. Speaking still does not come easily, and her throat burns in protest regardless of whether or not she is wont to speak in the first place.

Ganondorf passes a glance over her, at her silence, in a new and appraising way, like she is his charge, suddenly. “When was the last time you’ve eaten?” His tone softens by a fraction. So, he can sympathize with hunger. Zelda makes a mental note of this, and wonders only for a second what else might glean his sympathy. When she doesn’t answer immediately, he drops to a knee and begins unpacking cuts of meat from his sack, as well as a pile of firewood and a piece of flint, and waits for her to speak. She hasn’t had to answer to anyone in a century, after all. Call it a side effect of solitude. 

“I . . . haven’t.” Zelda answers cautiously, unsure of the reaction her words will garner from him.  “I no longer felt the need to eat for as long as I’ve been here. Hunger, thirst, the need to relieve myself. That’s all lost to me, now. It’s been like a waking cryogenesis. I am alive in that I am breathing, yet I still wonder . . . ” She trails off, dropping her gaze to the sack of fruits and meat that lie between them. She wills herself to feel hunger at her first sight of food in years, turning her focus onto the pit of her belly, waiting for something to stir. 

“Do you sleep, still?” He asks. He hasn’t taken his eyes off of her. There is a silence, then, one of those moments when there is only the sound of one breathing, through the chest as though it is a cave falling inward. Zelda listens to the pulse of it and sends her silent thanks to the goddesses. Perhaps this is enough, for now, to breathe and to sleep.

“Yes.” She breathes, wrapping her arms around herself. It is not a chill in the air she feels, but something within her. Her mind conjures an image of a vast, blue sea, though she cannot fathom why.

“Then I would say you are very much alive. The dead require less death, don’t they?” He’s the first to break eye contact, and Zelda can no longer remember the last time she saw the ocean.  

Slowly, as though offering a scrap to a skirted animal, Ganondorf  draws an apple from his pack and holds it out to her in the palm of his hand. She takes it, dipping her head in the merest of thanks, though he accepts it anyway with a sterner nod. 

She allows the mechanical to overcome her, raising the apple to her lips and biting down gingerly, for fear that her teeth may shatter. The movement of her jaw is exhausting. The juice slips into her palm and trails down her wrist. She watches this descent with the same disant observance one might direct towards an ant making its trek across a stone. Ganondorf arranges  the bundle of wood into a pile. The veins along the inside of his arm jump as he strikes the flint against a stone, and moments later they have a crackling campfire between them.

Wiping the juice from her lip with her thumb, wiping her thumb on her dress, she eyes the apple in her hand as though waiting for some change to overtake her. When none comes, she hands the apple back to Ganondorf, figuring she should at least wait and see if her body accepts the food after going so long without before trying to stomach any more.

“I’ve read about a medical condition where a body is sleeping and cannot wake up. They may move occasionally, but it is believed that they have no thoughts. That is what it feels like, even when I know I’m awake. I . . . lose myself. I cannot be sure of my own existence, most days.” She licks her dry lips, her throat aching as the cost of two conversations, though she finds herself unwilling to drop the subject now that she’s raised it. She could not find it appropriate to discuss the matter with her father, given his current state of transience. However, ever the diligent researcher, she’s been longing to share her observations. 

Zelda draws closer to the fire, for the light more than anything. The shine of it is a comfort to her, the flickering warmth so unlike the blight, coursing with an unnaturally bright pink and those sickly yellow eyes. “I am able to sleep for some time, if I will it.” She continues. “I’ve woken to find the seasons have changed, years of them. I fear that It strengthens the Calamity’s power, so I’ve tried quite hard to remain awake.”

“How do you spend your waking moments, then?” Ganondorf returns gruffly, stoking the fire some more.

“I think. How I could have done things differently, how these outcomes may be changed.”

“For decades, all you have thought about have been your own failures.” She flinches at that, that lack of caution in his tone. It doesn’t go unnoticed, and he arches a brow. “What- can you only agree with those who are like you?”

“No, that’s-” Zelda stammers. “You are missing the point. I-”

“-Have you thought of a way to stop this thing?” He gestures behind him with a wide sweep of his arm. The corridor is empty, but his meaning clear. It cleaves her heart to be reminded of what's beyond those doors, the disease festering in the heart of her once-home. 

“I am to believe my presence in the castle is keeping its power at bay until Link arrives.” 

Ganondorf rolls his eyes at the mention of the hero’s name. “So you continue to advance the cause of your own helplessness. Are you incapable of wanting anything more for yourself than to be a placeholder?”

“I am-” Zelda starts, feeling her face and neck flush with anger, while in the back of her mind she’s reeling from the shock to her system, the sensation unearthed from dormancy. She cannot help but revel to the fact that she can feel this much at once. 

Oblivious to this awakening of sorts, Ganondorf charges forward with his point. “What is that line you liked to use? That I’m  _ too forward?  _ Well, I’m sorry,” He says, sounding anything but. “That I am not one of your ladies come for tea. There is something to be done that matters here, and I intend to be the one who does it, if you could manage to stay out of my way as you are with everything else.”

Zelda shakes her head in an attempt to clear the rise he’s gotten out of her. It does not do to dwell on anger. Indignant, seething, and irrelevant. “Fine then, what do you want?” She huffs with the uncharitable irritability that arises from being held to the whims of foreign diplomats, being reminded that she was only and after all a Queen _in waiting._

He needs no time to consider, he’s on his feet before she finishes her breath. “I want to see the castle.”


End file.
